Books like 'The Necrophiliac'
Readers who enjoyed The Necrophiliac by Gabrielle Wittkop also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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Different Seasons by Stephen King
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 67 ratingsFrom the Magical Pen of Stephen King, Four Mesmerizing Novellas…“Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption”An unjustly imprisoned convict seeks a strange and startling revenge…the basis for the Best Picture Academy Award nominee The Shawshank Redemption... -
The Shining by Stephen King, Campbell Scott
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 89 ratingsFirst published in 1977, The Shining quickly became a benchmark in the literary career of Stephen King. This tale of a troubled man hired to care for a remote mountain resort over the winter, his loyal wife, and their uniquely gifted son slowly but steadily unfolds as secrets from the Overlook Hotel's past are revealed, and the hotel itself attempts to claim the very souls of the Torrance family... -
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsSome inhabitants of a peaceful kingdom cannot tolerate the act of cruelty that underlies its happiness.The story "Omelas" was first published in New Dimensions 3, a hard-cover science fiction anthology edited by Robert Silverberg, in October 1973, and the following year it won Le Guin the prestigious Hugo Award for best short story...Categorized as:
classics dark literary-fiction 20th-century anthologies audiobook contemporary drama -
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, Kathy Bates
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 80 ratingsHannibal Lecter. The ultimate villain of modern fiction who scared the world silent. A young FBI trainee. An evil genius locked away for unspeakable crimes. A plunge into the darkest chambers of a psychopath's mind -- in the deadly search for a serial killer . . .An instant classic of chilling psychological suspense . . . a critically acclaimed audio production of unforgettable intensity . . -
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 88 ratingsBoisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Here is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her... -
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 73 ratingsFour decades after it first terrified the world, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist is back! An extraordinary classic work of horror and dark paranormal suspense. In this stunning 40th Anniversary Edition, a desperate mother and two priests fight to free the soul of a little girl from a supernatural entity of pure malevolence... -
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, Thomas Pynchon
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 82 ratingsThe new novel by George Orwell is the major work towards which all his previous writing has pointed. Critics have hailed it as his "most solid, most brilliant" work. Though the story of Nineteen Eighty-Four takes place thirty-five years hence, it is in every sense timely. The scene is London, where there has been no new housing since 1950 and where the city-wide slums are called Victory Mansions...Categorized as:
classics dark literary-fiction 20th-century alternate-history audiobook book contemporary -
Watchers by Dean Koontz
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsOn his thirty-sixth birthday, Travis Cornell hikes into the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. But his path is soon blocked by a bedraggled Golden Retriever who will let him go no further into the dark woods.That morning, Travis had been desperate to find some happiness in his lonely, seemingly cursed life... -
Misery by Stephen King
Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars · 81 ratingsNovelist Paul Sheldon has plans to make the difficult transition from writing historical romances featuring heroine Misery Chastain to publishing literary fiction. Annie Wilkes, Sheldon's number one fan, rescues the author from the scene of a car accident... -
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsArguably the masterpiece of a novelist as highly praised and scarcely read as any living writer, the Vintage Contemporaries reprint of Suttree should help to bring McCarthy the readers to match his many awards and voluminous reviews... -
Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsOne of our most imaginative and accomplished writers, Angela Carter left behind a dazzling array of work: essays, citicism, and fiction. But it is in her short stories that her extraordinary talents—as a fabulist, feminist, social critic, and weaver of tales—are most penetratingly evident...Categorized as:
classics gothic literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fairy-tale -
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 79 ratingsIt follows the experiences of an unnamed protagonist struggling with insomnia. Inspired by his doctor's exasperated remark that insomnia is not suffering, the protagonist finds relief by impersonating a seriously ill person in several support groups. Then he meets a mysterious man named Tyler Durden and establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy...Categorized as:
classics crime dark literary-fiction transgressive-mc 20th-century action-adventure adult -
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 101 ratingsWinston Smith is a low-rung member of the Party, the ruling government of Oceania. He works in the Ministry of Truth, the Party's propoganda arm, where he is in charge of revising history. He is but a small brick in the pyramid that is the Party, at the head of which stands Big Brother. Big Brother the infallible. Big Brother the all-powerful...Categorized as:
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Psycho by Robert Bloch
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsThe story was all too real-indeed this classic was inspired by the real-life story of Ed Gein, a psychotic murderer who led a dual life. Alfred Hitchcock too was captivated, and turned the book into one of the most-loved classic films of all time the year after it was released.Norman Bates loves his Mother. She has been dead for the past twenty years, or so people think... -
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Blow-Up and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsA young girl spends her summer vacation in a country house where a tiger roams . . . A man reading a mystery finds out too late that he is the murderer's victim . .Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction horror -
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsIn his blistering new novel, Cormac McCarthy returns to the Texas-Mexico border, the setting of his famed Border Trilogy. The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. One day, Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back...Categorized as:
classics crime dark gothic literary-fiction 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure -
The Bachman Books by Richard Bachman, Stephen King
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 57 ratingsOmnibus collection of four early Bachman novels (Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, The Running Man) and the essay "Why I Was...Categorized as:
classics crime dark transgressive-mc 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies -
Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr., Darren Aronofsky
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsIn Coney Island, Brooklyn, Sarah Goldfarb, a lonely widow, wants nothing more than to lose weight and appear on a television game show. She becomes addicted to diet pills in her obsessive quest, while her junkie son, Harry, along with his girlfriend, Marion, and his best friend, Tyrone, have devised an illicit shortcut to wealth and leisure by scoring a pound of uncut heroin...Categorized as:
classics crime dark literary-fiction transgressive-mc 20th-century abuse action-adventure -
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsBrace yourself, America, for Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting—the novel and the film that became the cult sensations of Britain. Trainspotting is the novel that first launched Irvine Welsh's spectacular career—an authentic, unrelenting, and strangely exhilarating episodic group portrait of blasted lives. It accomplished for its own time and place what Hubert Selby, Jr...Categorized as:
classics crime dark literary-fiction transgressive-mc 20th-century action-adventure audiobook -
Along Came a Spider by James Patterson
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 79 ratingsWhat have we got? A missing little girl named Maggie Rose . . . a family of three brutally murdered in the projects of Washington, D.C. . . . the thrill-killing of a beautiful elementary school teacher . . . a psychopathic serial kidnapper/murderer who is so terrifying that the FBI, the Secret Service, and the police cannot outsmart him - even after he's been captured... -
The Lime Works: A Novel (Vintage International) by Thomas Bernhard
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFor five years, Konrad has imprisoned himself and his crippled wife in an abandoned lime works where he’s conducted odd auditory experiments and prepared to write his masterwork, The Sense of Hearing. As the story begins, he’s just blown the head off his wife with the Mannlicher carbine she kept strapped to her wheelchair... -
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsA collection of linked stories narrated by a recovering alcoholic and heroin addict, Jesus' Son is a disturbing portrayal of loneliness and hope. He travels through an American underworld of burnt-out sports stars, hospital waiting rooms, doomed relationships and senseless violence...Categorized as:
classics crime dark literary-fiction transgressive-mc 20th-century adult anthologies -
Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 68 ratingsThe year is 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, have come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient. Multiple murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this remote and barren island, despite having been kept in a locked cell under constant surveillance... -
Franz Kafka's The Castle (Dramatization) by David Fishelson, Aaron Leichter
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsNote - This is not the novel by Franz Kafka! For the novel see The... -
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No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsJean-Paul Sartre, the great French existentialist, displays his mastery of drama in NO EXIT, an unforgettable portrayal of hell.The play is a depiction of the afterlife in which three deceased characters are punished by being locked into a room together for all eternity...Categorized as:
classics dark literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult afterlife audiobook -
The Magus by John Fowles
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsThis daring literary thriller, rich with eroticism and suspense, is one of John Fowles's best-loved and bestselling novels and has contributed significantly to his international reputation as a writer of the first degree. At the center of The Magus is Nicholas Urfe, a young Englishman who accepts a teaching position on a remote Greek island, where he befriends a local millionaire...Categorized as:
classics dark-academia gothic literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 71 ratingsA second family has been massacred by the terrifying serial killer the press has christened "The Tooth Fairy" Special Agent Jack Crawford turns to the one man who can help restart a failed investigation?Will Graham. Graham is the greatest profiler the FBI ever had, but the physical and mental scars of capturing Hannibal Lecter have caused Graham to go into early retirement... -
The Tenant by Roland Topor
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe Tenant chronicles a harrowing, fascinating descent into madness as the pathologically alienated Trelkovsky is subsumed into Simone Choule, an enigmatic suicide whose presence saturates his new apartment. More than a tale of possession, the novel probes disturbing depths of guilt, paranoia, and sexual obsession with an unsparing detachment... -
Of Mice and Mooshaber by Ladislav Fuks, Mark Corner
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsLadislav Fuks (1923-94) was an outstanding Czech writer whose work, consisting primarily of psychological fiction, explores themes of anxiety and life in totalitarian systems... -
Teatro Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThis collection features tormented individuals who play out their doom in various odd little towns, as well as in dark sectors frequented by sinister and often blackly comical eccentrics. The cycle of narratives that includes the title work of this collection, for instance, introduces readers to a freakish community of artists who encounter demonic perils that ultimately engulf their lives...Categorized as:
dark gothic literary-fiction 20th-century 21st-century adult anthologies contemporary -
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 58 ratingsThe Lottery, one of the most terrifying stories written in this century, created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker. "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery:" with twenty-four equally unusual stories... -
Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsIn these dark, disturbing stories Roald Dahl explores the sinister side of human nature: the cunning, sly selfish part of each of us that leads into the territory of the unexpected and unsettling.Originally published in 1960, Kiss Kiss brings together 11 of Roald's macabre adult tales... -
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 50 ratingsThe Metamorphosis and Other Stories, by Franz Kafka, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras...Categorized as:
classics dark literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook contemporary -
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 55 ratingsIn a small American town, the local residents are abuzz with excitement and nervousness when they wake on the morning of the twenty-seventh of June. Everything has been prepared for the town’s annual tradition—a lottery in which every family must participate, and no one wants to win. “The Lottery” stands out as one of the most famous short stories in American literary history... -
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Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsRosemary and Guy Woodhouse, an ordinary young couple, settle into a New York City apartment, unaware that the elderly neighbors and their bizarre group of friends have taken a disturbing interest in them... -
Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales by Yōko Ogawa
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAn aspiring writer moves into a new apartment and discovers that her landlady has murdered her husband. Elsewhere, an accomplished surgeon is approached by a cabaret singer, whose beautiful appearance belies the grotesque condition of her heart. And while the surgeon’s jealous lover vows to kill him, a violent envy also stirs in the soul of a lonely craftsman... -
The Collector by John Fowles
Rated: 3.99 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsWithdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda. When he wins the pools he buys a remote Sussex house and calmly abducts Miranda, believing she will grow to love him in time... -
Death in Midsummer and Other Stories by Yukio Mishima
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsRecognized throughout the world for his brilliance as a novelist and playwright, Yukio Mishima is also noted as a master of the short story in his native Japan. Here nine of his finest stories, selected by Mishima himself, represent his extraordinary ability to depict a wide variety of human beings in moments of significance... -
Cosmos by Witold Gombrowicz
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA dark, quasi-detective novel, Cosmos follows the classic noir motif to explore the arbitrariness of language, the joke of human freedom, and man’s attempt to bring order out of chaos in his psychological life.Published in 1965, Cosmos is the last novel by Witold Gombrowicz (1904–1969) and his most somber and multifaceted work... -
The Birds and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsHow long he fought with them in the darkness he could not tell, but at last the beating of the wings about him lessened and then withdrew...A classic of alienation and horror, The Birds was immortalised by Hitchcock in his celebrated film. The five other chilling stories in this collection echo a sense of dislocation and mock man's sense of dominance over the natural world... -
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 84 ratingsTold by the central character, Alex, this brilliant, hilarious, and disturbing novel creates an alarming futuristic vision of violence, high technology, and authoritarianism... -
Carrie by Stephen King
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 81 ratingsA modern classic, Carrie introduced a distinctive new voice in American fiction -- Stephen King. The story of misunderstood high school girl Carrie White, her extraordinary telekinetic powers, and her violent rampage of revenge, remains one of the most barrier-breaking and shocking novels of all time.Make a date with terror and live the nightmare that is.. -
Catastrophe: And Other Stories by Dino Buzzati
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIn Catastrophe, the renowned Italian short story writer Dino Buzzati brings vividly to life the slow and quietly terrifying collapse of our known, everyday world. In stories touched by the fantastical and the strange, and filled with humor, irony, and menace, Buzzati illuminates the nightmarish side of our ordinary existence...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction horror -
Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsShe's a catwalk model who has everything: a boyfriend, a career, a loyal best friend. But when a sudden motor 'accident' leaves her disfigured and incapable of speech, she goes from being the beautiful centre of attention to being an invisible monster, so hideous that no one will acknowledge she exists...Categorized as:
classics crime dark literary-fiction transgressive-mc 20th-century action-adventure audiobook -
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The Other by Thomas Tryon
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsEntranced and terrified, the reader of The Other is swept up in the life of a Connecticut country town in the thirties—and in the fearful mysteries that slowly darken and overwhelm it.Originally published in 1971, The Other is one of the most influential horror novels ever written... -
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsWritten in 1914 but not published until 1925, a year after Kafka’s death, The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information... -
V. by Thomas Pynchon
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe wild, macabre tale of the twentieth century and of two men—one looking for something he has lost, the other with nothing much to lose—and "V.," the unknown woman of the title...Categorized as:
classics crime literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies contemporary -
Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsKerr, in the NY Herald-Tribune, describes: "This, says Mr. Williams through the most sympathetic voice among his characters, 'is a true story about the time and the world we live in.' He has made it seem true-or at least curiously and suspensefully possible-by the extraordinary skill with which he has wrung detail after detail out of a young woman who has lived with horror... -
The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat, Porochista Khakpour
Rated: 3.99 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsRecognized as the outstanding Iranian writer of the twentieth century, Sadegh Hedayat is credited with having brought his country's language and literature into the mainstream of contemporary writing. The Blind Owl, long considered a classic and often compared to the works of Poe, chillingly recreates the labyrinthine movements of a deranged mind... -
Jaws by Peter Benchley
Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars · 65 ratingsWith the 1974 publication of the novel Jaws and the release a year later of the film based on the book, an American cultural phe- nomenon was born. Today, the remarkable bestseller by Peter Benchley still towers as a thrilling classic of suspense, drama, and the eternal conflicts of man against nature . and man against himself...
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